Monday, October 7. 2013

A great deal has been going on in the steam shop while I
have been travelling to the UK.Thanks
to Collin, Phil, Jim and Eric for series of updates on which this update is
based.

Obviously most activity is focused on 1630 and getting her
ready for a steam test

·In the cab:

Last
weekend the firehole casting was fitted to the backhead

Fire hole casting in place

Collin had put in a lot of work during the week to fit
lagging blocks on the backhead;

On 10/5/13 Rick, Vince & Collin mudded the
backhead of the cab. The mudding on the 5th centered on filling in the holes,
so to speak. Approximately 10-12 buckets of mud were hauled into the cab and
applied.

Collin applies insulating
mud

After having mudded the backhead the group then began
the process of fitting the sheet metal which is akin to assembling a jig saw
puzzle. First, the individual pieces are attached to the backhead, then the
radius pieces which overlap both the backhead and wrapper sheet pieces, tying
everything together.

Fitting sheet metal to the backhead

At the end of the day the mudding was largely complete
and all backhead pieces were in place. Additionally, several pieces of radius corner
sheet pieces had been fitted. This shows
what was achieved when compared to the first picture.

Main sheets now in place on the
backhead

At this point we await the completion of some pipe
fitting work on the pressure pipe leading from the steam chests to a gauge in
the cab. Upon completion of that fitting the remainder of the sheet metal in
the cab will be finished.

·On the boiler barrel

Eric "the crew chief" had his team working
on fitting the sheet metal over the boiler courses so the front course is now
covered.

Further lagging blocks were fitted so that the lagging
is extending steadily toward the firebox.

Jerry has been filling the gaps with insulating mud to
complete each ring.

First ring of sheet metal in place

·Tom has finished
work on the throttle and this is now ready to refit, hopefully in the coming
weekend.

·Work has continued
on the air pump.The seats of the
various valves are being cleaned and lapped to ensure efficient operation.

Valve seat lapping on the air pump

·As noted last week,
Dennis has been cutting the numerous pieces of plate work for the smokebox.Each new piece is copied from and matched to
the original so that the "jigsaw" will fit together in the smokebox.

Cutting the new plate work

The
tricky part is that the copy cannot be exact!.The comparison between new and old shows why replacement is
necessary.So the trick is that the copy
must match the old where it is complete but also be designed to replace the
metal that is no longer there!

New versus old

In other areas:

·A good deal of effort went in to enabling the
move of locomotives from the steam lead area.

As mentioned last week we had the
great pleasure of finding out that a TV show may be filmed here at IRM. Or it was a pleasure until we as discovered
that they wanted to film on the steam leads, which of course means all of our
equipment on the steam leads has to be move.So, we were then faced with the ever "amazingly fun" task of
lubricating all of our equipment...ALL
OF IT.

So, the day began with checking
our supply of oil and grease that we have. Ralph, Cameron, Brian, and Phil
worked on lubricating the equipment out on the leads. Ralph, Cameron, and I
took machine oil and went around to all of the engines and lubricated all of
the rods.

A lot of equipment to move

The
reason for all of the work is that equipment that is seldom moved suffers from
the weather and the bearings would be damaged if it is simply moved as it is
with rain water as a lubricant !..

Water - not what you want in a journal
box

Suck out the water

Brian and Cameron pump in new oil

Ready to move

A long line of steam on the main line

Brian took a soft grease gun and
applied it to all the soft grease points. Then we checked the levels our
journal box oil and discovered it to be empty. Tom had ordered a 55 gallon drum
but it has not arrived yet. So, we went to the car department and they let us
have some of theirs. Joel from the car department set up a new barrel for us
and helped us fill up our cans. A big thank you to Joel for doing that. We were
able to put car oil into most of the Journal boxes. I think Cameron came in on
Sunday and finished up all of the boxes.

·Bob has continued working on the planer.It is now substantially painted and a filter
has been fitted to enable the hydraulics to be activated

A lot of progress on the planer

So a lot has been achieved and I hope to see it at first
hand this Saturday, when I get back to the shop.

Nigel

Monday, October 7. 2013

A big "Thank You" goes out to everyone who was involved with the Rock Island 2612 Project! Making it operational in six months was NO easy task! It took a team effort to achieve the needed results! Here then in no particular order are the names of the people who helped make the job happen. Dave Cook, Dan Bixler, Loraine Bixler, Gary Sherman, Brian Paterson, Andy Townsend, Mark Hoffman, Paul Cronin, Mike Steigerwald, Ray Erickson, Nancy Ring and yours truly. Special thanks goes to the operations department for switching the car around and to Dept Curator, Mike Baksic, for believing in our efforts. Here are some pictures of the crew that made the RI 2612 operational!

After a hard day of work

Sitting down on the job

Ray was taking this picture

Ray Brian Loraine Nancy Dan Kyle and Gary

Clowning around

Dave Cook enjoys using the Dewalt sander

Kyle....one of the new members

Coming up..... The second half of the year begins with more needle chipping of the interior. We still need funds for track space! Restricted Fund... RI 2612 is the category. Thanks Roger Kramer

Sunday, October 6. 2013

I am still intending to catch up with BLOG posts on the various restoration activities, now so late in posting. Maybe one more week and things will improve. For now I will just post groups of pics without a specific date for the work, and of course many of these are not strictly making sawdust in the wood shop.

Ready For Anything

Long time member, supporter and volunteer, Jim Heinlein, has been helping out most Tuesdays on the Chicago Rapid Transit 1024 restoration work. Here he is suited up ready for work with much appropriate protective gear. Or is that an alien invader from the most recent UFO?

Chipping

No, I am sure it is Jim working with a needle gun to remove a half century of grease, dirt, and rust from one of the trucks under this vintage elevated car from Chicago.

End Platform

Meanwhile Tim Peters continues his excellent progress on the platform on the west end of the car. Much of this area has been completed, presenting a great look at what this entire project will result in. Here, Tim is working on the metalwork, and you will immediately see why this series had the nickname of a GATE CAR. It was a very labor intensive operation in train service as a trainman had to be stationed for each set of cars, and then at each stop, he had to straddle the car ends above the couplings to manually swing open the gates for passengers to alight or board.

Ad Card Panels

We would like to welcome new volunteers Eddy Pszczolkowski and Andy Oliveri who pitched in on the Cleveland Transit System 4223 project. Here they are removing many of the old layers of paint from the panels which are installed above the standee windows on the car interior, and hold the ubiquitous ad cards seen on most city transit systems.

Heater Ducts

Other work continues on the car interior as shown by Eric Lorenz. Below the regular windows at floor level there are a series of metal panels and vents which serve functionally as heater air ducts. While these original pieces are in very poor condition and will be replaced with new ones, they are positioned in place to allow measurements to be made and to confirm the arrangement of each panel and its location.

Tuesday, October 1. 2013

It seems very distant to be providing this update from the UK.For the input I must thank Collin and Jim.

The immediate good news was that apparently we did not put Ethan and Evelina off.Both were back and hard at work on Saturday.

On 1630:

·Rick, Ed & Collin concentrated on lagging the back head.First, the pieces of sheet metal were fitted up against the firebox to determine where and how they fit together.After having accomplished that step it was determined that the firebox door should be added next as it serves as a template against which the insulation is cut.

The previous week the fire door casting, weighing several hundred pounds, was lifted into the tank's coal bunker with the forklift.A team including Rick, Collin, and Eric dragged the door over to the stoker coal feed pipe and placed it so the mating flange to the backhead was horizontal. Rick then mixed up the special fire-resistant concrete and mudded the flange.This mud serves as the gasket between the fire door and the back head where traditional insulation would be consumed by the fire.This is a tricky operation as the concrete has to conform to the surface of the back head before setting up yet be solid enough that it does not fall out of the flange once the flange is vertical.

Rick starts to apply fire resistant concrete

On the initial attempt the mixture was not set up enough so the acetylene rig was brought over to heat up the flange and speed up the drying process.Then a paper was tied to the top of the flange to hold the concrete in place until the fire door casting could be bolted to the back head. Once in place and torqued down, Rick mudded the flange interface completing the seal against the back head.

Concrete completed ready to fit

As a final step to the back head project, Rick & Collin determined the appropriate width of the insulation for the back head is 2".Since our insulation comes in 2 1/2" sheets, Rick ripped down the sheets, one at a time and then cut them down the center as well. So, when work resumes next week, the back head insulation work can proceed as all parts are now ready.

On Sunday, Tom and Cameron worked on aligning the fire-hole door casting with the stoker riser so that the securing bolts can be fitted.

·Work progressed steadily on the boiler insulation as well. Eric, Jerry, Ethan, Evelina, Brian and Jim continued lagging the boiler courses. Since Eric has led this project and we had several new volunteers Eric became known simply as "Crew Chief". In totality, the lagging blocks are in place on the first, second and much of the third courses with a significant portion of the infill mudding also accomplished in these areas.

Progress on the boiler lagging

·Jim Opolony picked up, from the wood shop, the cab window frame that Collin put his shoulder through two weeks ago. Many thanks to Bob and the guys for their efforts in producing the beading.Ed worked on the frame, cleaning it up and preparing it for the installation of the glass.

Repaired cab window

·Dennis worked on the sheet metal for the smokebox.A number of the pieces were cut to shape and checked against the old damaged sections to ensure a match.

·Tom and Ralph worked on the throttle.

·Mike and Brian continued work on the valves of the air compressor.

In other areas:

·Phil and several others worked on preparing the steam locomotives on steam row for movement.More heavy duty switching is in prospect!.

·Stu and Jane worked on the planer and have now primed the main pillar

Blog Administration

Find us on Facebook

find us on instagram

Category Tree

Calendar

Quicksearch

Comments

Nigel Bennett about Steam Department Update June 2015Wed, 07-29-2015 07:42Subject to the general caveat that
a 100 year old steam engine can
always develop a last minute fault,
it is planned that #1630 will
operate 8/1 and [...]

CincyCubfan23 about Steam Department Update June 2015Wed, 07-29-2015 06:28Nigel - First, THANK YOU for all
the work you do (and everyone else
at IRM, for that matter)!
I believe I know the answer, but
I'll ask anyhow. [...]

Nathan about Steam Department Update June 2015Mon, 07-27-2015 16:26Nigel,
All matters of practicality do
indeed have to be taken into
consideration.
That said, as another suggestion,
you may want to talk to your [...]

Nigel Bennett about Steam Department Update June 2015Mon, 07-27-2015 07:38Nathan,
All ideas to be considered and
depends on how this year turns
out.
The big reason we run Thomas over
the route we do is the space [...]

Nathan about Steam Department Update June 2015Sun, 07-26-2015 19:24Hi Nigel,
Just noticed the comments and plans
for Thomas on this thread and am
intrigued.
It seems like a great idea to have
#1630 push the Percy [...]

Nigel Bennett about Steam Department Update June 2015Sun, 07-26-2015 09:41Andrew,
No. The Thomas train will follow
its normal route.
There will be two event trains, the
Thomas train and the Percy train
(standard DOWT [...]

Nigel Bennett about Steam Department Update June 2015Sat, 07-25-2015 08:45Peter,
The Thomas days will be
significantly different this year.
There will be a Percy train as well
as a Thomas train and, subject to
the [...]

Peter D. about Steam Department Update June 2015Fri, 07-24-2015 23:51Greetings: Quick question regarding
steam operations...In addition to
Thomas, when would you expect a
steam locomotive to be on the
tacks. Thanks.